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Obama lost the popular vote to Hillary in 2008 primaries.
Do you need a civics lesson?
We're a REPUBLIC and the EC is built based on the HOUSE/population vote ratios. One person/One vote gets you Venezuela.
The only reason Hillary won the popular vote was because she was an idiot and poured money into the urban locations she was ALREADY WINNING in order to boost her popular vote. Instead of RUNNING AN ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN.
Perhaps you need a civics lesson. How a party chooses its candidate is up to the party. It is NOT an aspect of our election laws and is not covered under the Constitution.
Bringing Venezuela into the discussion is bizarre.
Perhaps you need a civics lesson. How a party chooses its candidate is up to the party. It is NOT an aspect of our election laws and is not covered under the Constitution.
Bringing Venezuela into the discussion is bizarre.
It's called grasping. Some of them are desperate to defend an institution that is the antithesis of what an election really is. They cannot seem to understand that when it was changed so that electors no longer really decided whom the President would be all that about "being a Republic" became nonsensical.
What is really going on is that those who support rule by a conservative minority support the EC because there is a built in advantage for this group.
The popular vote will never happen and if it did you can kiss the country goodbye. I'm not against rethinking the current electoral college system, but no way would I want to see the states with the most people deciding the fates of parts of the country they wouldn't be caught dead in.
The popular vote will never happen and if it did you can kiss the country goodbye. I'm not against rethinking the current electoral college system, but no way would I want to see the states with the most people deciding the fates of parts of the country they wouldn't be caught dead in.
Why should a handful of unrepresentative swing states decide the fate of the rest of the country instead?
Quote:
Originally Posted by runswithscissors
Obama lost the popular vote to Hillary in 2008 primaries.
Do you need a civics lesson?
We're a REPUBLIC and the EC is built based on the HOUSE/population vote ratios. One person/One vote gets you Venezuela.
The only reason Hillary won the popular vote was because she was an idiot and poured money into the urban locations she was ALREADY WINNING in order to boost her popular vote. Instead of RUNNING AN ELECTORAL CAMPAIGN.
Two important points: 1) party primaries are private contests with no official stamp from the United States, and 2) the popular vote b/w Obama & Clinton in the '08 primaries was close. Neither campaigned in Michigan because the State violated the Party's primary rules, and if you've got Clinton winning the popular vote, you must be counting Michigan.
Plenty of countries do a fine job with one person/one vote. France, for example, has a simple majoritarian election with runoffs to ensure that the President gets the majority of votes cast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PacoMartin
The idea that the President should be elected by a majority of the country was important in the constitution. No one wanted a simple plurality.
In 1992 no one had a majority of popular votes
43.01% Clinton
37.45% Bush
18.91% Perot
But it is not impossible to imagine a future election where 4 candidates run, and no one gets more than 30% of the popular vote. The idea of selecting the candidate with the largest number of popular votes would be repugnant.
Keep in mind that the original concept was that each congressional district would vote for an "elector" who would be free to vote his conscience. The thought was that a large percentage of elections would not produce a majority of electoral college votes, the top 3 would then be selected and the winner determined by the House of Representatives.
Only one presidential election (1824) actually ended up being determined by the House. The results after the popular election were:
99 Andrew Jackson
84 John Q. Adams
41 William H. Crawford
37 Henry Clay
According to the constitution the top three candidates were eligible for a run off in the House. Henry Clay made a bargain for his votes and John Q Adams won the presidency.
The Founders were evidently very comfortable with plurality Presidents. The first election for which we have popular vote records is 1824, and the winner, John Quincy Adams, had just over 30% of the popular vote & 32% of the electoral vote. It was common in the past for 3 & 4 candidates to run. The two party system is a recent phenomenon. Why would it be more repugnant to use a popular vote plurality?
Quote:
Originally Posted by PacoMartin
Majority means over 50%. The American English sense that plurality means "excess of votes over rival candidates," especially when none has an absolute majority, is from 1828. The word specifically was used that way because of the results of the 1824 presidential election.
Clinton won a majority of electoral college votes, but just a plurality of the popular vote.
The founding fathers wanted the President to win a ABSOLUTE MAJORITY of the country. They defined that as a majority of EC votes. In the first election less than 2% of the population of the country voted, so they had no sense that the results of a popular vote would be meaningful. The second election had closer to 1% of the population voting.
France manages an election runoff between the top 2 candidates to get a popular majority.
19 out of 48 Presidents have been plurality vote winners.
A system designed for 13 States in an era of faithless electors, indirect election of Senators, and suffrage limited to white, propertied men is not well-fitted to an era of 50 States, faithful electors, direct election of Senators, and universal suffrage.
The Framers wanted to agree on a Constitution. The bicameral Congress, 3/5ths Compromise, and the Electoral College were all (at least in part) about getting to "yes" in a world where 5 of the 13 original States had high enslaved populations--populations they wished to leverage into power in the Congress & the Executive Branch.
Why should a handful of unrepresentative swing states decide the fate of the rest of the country instead?
The perennial swing states -- Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, and sometimes Colorado or New Mexico -- are hardly unrepresentative. Taken together they are an excellent sample or subset of the nation as a whole.
But these swing states are only important because they are politically on the margin. There is a concept in economic theory called the median voter theorem, that the voter in the middle is always the one who decides for the group. It is his opinion that counts, not his support for a particular candidate. If you ranked all the states by the percentage of votes that they give to one candidate (either the winner or loser) then the one in the middle is the best representative of the country as a whole.
As for the non-swing states, they are not less important just because they always give their votes to the candidate of one party or the other. If the Democrat share in California dropped from 62% to 52%, that would be a monumental shift in opinion, even if the electoral votes still add up the same. A change of that magnitude would change policy, which is what we really want to happen when we vote. (Except for those who are part of a cult of personality, like the Sanders-nistas and Trumpists.)
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I say abolish the Electoral College entirely. AFAIC, it's good only for corny jokes about getting constantly drunk at night, missing important pre-election meetings during the daytime, and getting kicked out because of irresponsibility.
More seriously, I see no reason why there should be a direct popular vote for president. As it stands, the elections are decided only by the swing states, and the middle 10% of the swing state electorate besides. Neither Texas nor California votes count for that much. Same for Wyoming and Vermont.
If we must continue to have it, make it like the Nebraska and Maine systems: one electoral vote for the winner of each congressional district plus two for the statewide winner. Even that suggestion is more of a compromise than an actual favored position of mine.
The perennial swing states -- Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Iowa, and sometimes Colorado or New Mexico -- are hardly unrepresentative. Taken together they are an excellent sample or subset of the nation as a whole.
But these swing states are only important because they are politically on the margin. There is a concept in economic theory called the median voter theorem, that the voter in the middle is always the one who decides for the group. It is his opinion that counts, not his support for a particular candidate. If you ranked all the states by the percentage of votes that they give to one candidate (either the winner or loser) then the one in the middle is the best representative of the country as a whole.
As for the non-swing states, they are not less important just because they always give their votes to the candidate of one party or the other. If the Democrat share in California dropped from 62% to 52%, that would be a monumental shift in opinion, even if the electoral votes still add up the same. A change of that magnitude would change policy, which is what we really want to happen when we vote. (Except for those who are part of a cult of personality, like the Sanders-nistas and Trumpists.)
You've got to be joking that the perennial swing states are representative. They are missing California, Texas, and New York, home to ~87 million of the nation's 320 million people. Florida and New Mexico are the only swing states with a high proportion of latino voters. There is no Pacific swing state, no Deep South swing state, and no representation of the nation's biggest urban centers.
The method determines the middle. If we used a strictly popular vote, we would have a different middle voter than we do under the EC. That voter would rotate among States more frequently than our current system allows. When it comes to the Presidential election, a shift from 62% to 52% for one party does not matter under the EC--the exact same result obtains. It would really matter under a popular vote system, where candidates would have a greater incentive to fight for points in States they clearly aren't going to win. Where a Democrat might fight hard to move from 42% of Texas to 44% & a Republican might fight hard to move from 45% of New York to 47%.
The popular vote will never happen and if it did you can kiss the country goodbye. I'm not against rethinking the current electoral college system, but no way would I want to see the states with the most people deciding the fates of parts of the country they wouldn't be caught dead in.
popular vote is also as flawed as any other voting system, wonder why other people don't recognize that
oh well, can't win an argument when people are set into thinking they are right
post not directed at ceece, but people who think electoral college is flawed
You've got to be joking that the perennial swing states are representative. They are missing California, Texas, and New York, home to ~87 million of the nation's 320 million people. Florida and New Mexico are the only swing states with a high proportion of latino voters. There is no Pacific swing state, no Deep South swing state, and no representation of the nation's biggest urban centers.
The method determines the middle. If we used a strictly popular vote, we would have a different middle voter than we do under the EC. That voter would rotate among States more frequently than our current system allows. When it comes to the Presidential election, a shift from 62% to 52% for one party does not matter under the EC--the exact same result obtains. It would really matter under a popular vote system, where candidates would have a greater incentive to fight for points in States they clearly aren't going to win. Where a Democrat might fight hard to move from 42% of Texas to 44% & a Republican might fight hard to move from 45% of New York to 47%.
Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have a good number of Latino voters. Not sure about Wisconsin. As yo point out Florida does as well.
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